Podcast: The Year in Transit Starts with Yonah Freemark

Yonah Freemark joined us in January to talk about transit plans for 2016.

50 Years for a System?

The Twin Cities finally signed its full funding grant agreement(FFGA) with the FTA for the Central Corridor. This just 7 years after the completion of its first light rail line, the Hiawatha. In the meantime the Northstar Commuter Line was completed. Now they are planning for the Southwest Corridor and gearing up for that long haul fight as well. With any luck, that line will be signing its FFGA in less than a decade. But why does it take so long to build these transit lines and why are regions doing them one by one? Well, the answer as usual is money.

However of all places, Los Angeles has provided a discussion spark. The 30/10 program now nationally renamed America Fast Forward has pushed the Transit Space Race forward at least an inch, giving hope to regions tired of doing things one line at a time. Salt Lake City has proved expansion can be done on time and on budget and now other regions are starting to think, why not us? The Twin Cities is no different, with local leaders seeing the possibilities.

I'm hopeful that this will push the discussion along as to why it took ~40 years to build a network of national freeways but it seems like building out real transit networks in cities might take over 100 at the current pace. It's not like there aren't a lot of projects out there (complete excel sheet on the page). In fact, there are over 600 fixed guideway transit projects and that doesn't even count all of the frequent bus and trolley bus service that is being planned. That's not to say that all those lines are good lines, but they are out there.

I can only hope that we move past the one line a decade mentality and build lines that matter.

HOT Lanes, Sprawl, Not Transit

So says the FTA about stimulus cash. What a joke. I sure hope things change soon because I'm getting tired of this type of BS. Is anyone else encouraged by the DOT Secretary's blog? I am.

As county leaders press forward with Grand Parkway plans, Metro leaders are looking for a Plan B for two rail lines they had planned to use federal economic stimulus money to help fund. Metro’s pitch to fund the North and Southeast lines with stimulus funds fell short of the feds’ scheduling mandate.

Metro proposed to “get the ball rolling,” within 90 days, according to its brochure requesting $410 million in stimulus dollars. The transit agency also said $70 million could be used to convert 83 miles of high-occupancy vehicle lanes into high-occupancy toll lanes. Last week, Metro leaders said they learned that federal transit authorities preferred the $92 million it will receive in stimulus funds be used primarily on the HOV conversion.

This comes at the same time when Texas wants to use other stimulus funding for another sprawl road. Again, how would this ever match a cost-effectiveness measure?

Jerry Hoagland Gets It

A prominent Dallas area conservative is coming out in favor of greater infrastructure investment beating back on the typical calls to lower taxes and leave it to someone else. I'm amazed at the admission that Collin County's tax rate isn't that bad because he's kept it low and that taxing to invest in movement infrastructure is important to the future of the region. Finally, someone from what is usually the other team who gets it.

However, there are some people today - well intentioned people I might add, but misguided I believe - who would have you believe that the county's combined tax rate is out of control and too high. I respectfully disagree with this "Chicken Little" (the sky is falling) attitude...

...If our taxes were reduced, could we maintain the quality of life we have enjoyed in the past? The answer is, "Yes, we could - for a while." But I believe that there is something worse than paying a few dollars in taxes - and that something is sticking our collective heads in the sand and not properly planning for the future. Growth will gridlock us in the future (and therefore cost us more tomorrow) if we don't deal with it today...

... I wish we lived in a dream world where things were free, but that just isn't facing reality. These folks abhorrence to paying taxes for the convenience of being able to move around freely has tainted their thinking.

I suggest reading the whole statement in its entirety.

Two Thirds Green, One Third Black

It looks like New York will get a once in a lifetime opportunity. I trust that someone good will be found that can change the face of traffic engineering in New York City. Now if only we could pass a stimulus package that would make Danes proud. What kind of package would they pass you ask? Well one with two thirds green and one third black. Perhaps we could learn something about framing.

Last Thursday, the Danish government agreed to invest 94 billion kroner ($16 billion) to improve the nation’s roads, railways and bike lanes by 2020.

Traffic Minister Lars Barfoed was quoted by The Copenhagen Post as saying, “The shape of the agreement is clear: two-thirds green, one-third black,” meaning that most of the budget will go towards public transit infrastructure and the rest will be spent on asphalt road projects.

Much different than the 80/20 highways to transit we promote here. 4/5ths Black. Does that mean 4/5ths home ownership?

Thinking Inside the Box Left at DOT

Yonah as usual has a great post up on the confirmation hearing of future Secretary Lahood. There were a few parts that bothered me, including the repackaging of old ideas as innovative. When Senator Klobuchar of Minnesota asked what kind of innovative ways to replenish the highway trust fund, he said:

Public/private programs… Tolling of new lanes, tolling of highways, is a different way of thinking about it… We need to think of those kind of opportunities… Differently than just the gasoline tax… We know that people are still using Amtrak even though gas prices went down, we know people in places like Chicago are still using mass transit.

While I like all the nods to transit that were mentioned, and there were a lot of those, the idea of taxing cars alone as the only way to get things done, even if it is tolling is a bit one sided. What about how the Red Line in Portland was financed by trading property in exchange for Bechtel building the line. Or the Seattle Streetcar where property owners taxed themselves for half of the capital cost.

We need to somehow tie transportation investments to land use and that could mean funding based on true costs and things like tolling for suburban roads, but also other ideas that are floating around out there that could change the way we think about these investments and their value (H+T). Let's start to think harder. It's like we don't know how to be super innovative anymore. Or maybe I'm just hoping for too much.

Tampa's Endowment Experiment

The Tampa Streetcar has an endowment for it's operations that picks up part of the tab. It was created when the line started and has been dwindling ever since. But much of that is because stocks have tanked.

In 2007, the endowment accounted for about 40 percent of the streetcar's $2 million annual operating budget. That still left the endowment at about $3.3 million.

But in the past year, the fund plummeted to $1.4 million, partly due to its contribution to operating expenses, but mostly because the endowment was invested in securities that took a beating on Wall Street.

If this idea was brough forth in the early 90's this line would be operating a surplus from its endowment but given what has happened it's getting crushed by market conditions and perhaps overly aggresive investment. As property values have increased along the line, I'm surprised a more proactive approach at capturing them and putting them into the operations as well. At some point the city will have to take over, but no one should call this line a failure when they do. With 1,200 riders a day on limited operating times and over $1 billion in development along the line, it has shown what can be done with a lot of vacant line and a streetcar.

Pent Up Demand, Synergy, & The Market

Chris Leinberger is hopping on the urban train so to speak. Brad Plummer's post over at TNR's The Vine has already gotten some coverage at Greater Greater Washington and The Bellows but here's the money quote that discusses the lacking supply of walkable communities people want but can't afford.

By his count, some 30 to 50 percent of residents in U.S. metropolitan areas want to live in a walkable urban environment—a trend fueled by the growing number of single and childless couples, who will constitute 88 percent of household growth through 2040. Trouble is, he estimates there are currently only enough walkable neighborhoods to satisfy about 5 to 10 percent of metro residents, which is why rents in transit-accessible areas are so exorbitant.

The other side of this as both blog posts noted above is the issue of land use and zoning. I'm going to throw another wrench in and say there has to be a market. There have been a few rail projects that hope the build it and they will come system will work but there needs to be a concerted effort and existing market to make it work precisely because of the problems with our zoning code. An example of this is Cascade Station in Portland. On the way to the airport, the Bechtel company traded building the line for the land at the station. Unfortunately 911 hit a few days close to the opening of the line and the market dropped out from under the developers.

There's also the synergy issue. Places like the Pearl District and the South End in Charlotte were the next places to grow and close to the downtown urban market. I would say the transit was able to shape the development intensity. Further down the South Corridor has been a bit slower to take off. Over time as the prime properties are expanded, I expect the development to move further south along the line.

So while I see there is demand for walkable urbanism as Chris calls it, there are timelines of implementation that should be mentioned as well so that people don't expect overnight change. The Rosslyn Ballston corridor didn't take off over night either. I feel like the synergy point is an important one that gets missed from time to time when people expect TOD everywhere once the line opens. It's a long term investment with long term results. It will be interesting to see what happens in Denver as the opening of the whole transit system almost at once under the Fastracks program. I have heard some state that the push and focus that happened along the Southeast Corridor won't be replicated because the demand will be spread out among all the opening stations. It makes for an interesting test of the synergy idea and whether transit will be able to focus the intensity as it has in other corridors that had all the attention.

On the issue of paying for lines, I think developers will get a major boost from the infrastructure investment and should pitch in, or at least not be able to keep the massive windfalls from the investment that was made by everyone. But its also dependent more on vacant and extremely underutilized property appreciation. More money will be generated through vacant to build out than the appreciation of properties that already exist. Too many people think value capture will always be the answer when sometimes it will not, because the increment is too small to generate the funding needed. These issues and a ton more are discussed in a recent paper on Value Capture by the Center for TOD. We'll discuss that piece another time.

Also, a while ago I covered some key quotes in Chris Leinberger's book, The Option of Urbanism. Here's the series post by post.

Series Intro
The Favored Quarter
The Endless Landscape
Real Development Subsidization
Metro Brings Change
Subsidizing the Rich

San Francisco Fantasy Map & Investment

We're a bunch of wimps. Why is investing in infrastructure a luxury when people go out and spend so much money on their cars. A commenter (btw, please stop posting as anon. I don't care if you want to be anon, but make up a name so I can tell between commenters) in the post below called High Speed Rail a luxury we can't afford and wanted the money spent on local transit. Why the hell isn't anyone logical out there? Why are we pitting a long distance mode that will decrease airplane trips, the most dirty climate change inducing trips out there, versus a short distance mode that everyone knows is needed?

This isn't about one or the other, it's about both. Stop pitting HSR against the budget. Stop pitting HSR against schools. And stop pitting HSR versus better local transit. If we didn't pass this bond, it's not like the state will toss up $10 billion for a local transit bond. They have already stolen $3 frakin billion!!! in the last 3 years.

Then I started thinking about it. If the County of San Francisco asked me for an extra $100 a year for better transit, I would give it in a hearbeat. Heck I would give $500. Because it would make my life and everyone else's life in the city so much better. Think about it. If every citizen in the city gave $500 a year, this would be $41 per month. That's ~$383 million per year. Over 30 years, that is ~$11.5 billion. What could we do with $11.5 billion here? Well we could build 46 miles of subways at $250 million per mile. That is 4 north South Subway lines and 3 east west subway lines. We'd have a real freakin metro here! $41 per month is all it takes. That is one tank of gas per month. What could we get? Something like this:


Who would want anything like that? That's just a luxury.

Deep Seeded Bias

Jeff Tumlin as usual gets it right:

Jeffrey Tumlin, a transportation planner with Nelson Nygaard, a BART consultant, sees the skewed funding priorities as part of a deep-seated bias against transit in American public policy. "If your road or highway is experiencing bad levels of service, it's assumed that you need to get money to expand capacity," he says. "When you're allocating money for transit, nobody ever asks how crowded buses are."

This is a pretty good article from Salon as far as msm goes. Then there is this part, which is the story of most people's life on BART if you're taking the train during peak hours. Sardines.

Four minutes later, another Pittsburgh-Bay Point train arrives and an audible groan goes up in the station: This train is packed too. Inside one car, a poster on the wall applauds riders for taking the train instead of driving: "Thank you for not gridlocking today. Thanks for taking BART." It's not even peak rush hour yet.

Second tube anyone?

HT Bus Chick

Support for Transit by the Brick Yard

71% of people in Indianapolis would pay to fund transit. Seems like a movement is growing. However, I personally don't like the idea of starting with suburban commuter rail. Given that urbanites will pay for most of the line to the suburbs, its just another example of exporting tax base.

The Stakes of Stim

In track when teammates of mine used to get stim it was usually attaching wires to their muscles and turning a knob so that electricity would course through and loosen them up. Similar to the knob turn, folks in Congress are looking to pull the lever on a stimulus package to get things going. This idea isn't new. It was what got us through the great depression and built some of the most sturdy bridges, lodges, and infrastructure ever. These days when we build, it seems so cheap. We're always looking for shortcuts, but we shouldn't be doing that this time. We should be investing in our future, and hopefully it's a green one.

In Portland, city officials are already preparing lists of infrastructure projects they might launch with an infusion of federal money. It would be a nice silver lining for Portland if the economic crunch bought a refurbished bridge over the Willamette, or a streetcar extension.

This would be a big boon for cities that have projects ready to go. As I said in an earlier post, it will be a huge deal for cities like LA and Seattle to pass their transit measures. Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland, and Houston already have a lot of engineering done for their new lines and if infused with stim, they could push that money to other transit projects to extend thier networks furthering the gap between them and those which are falling further behind.

If for instance Seattle drops the ball, it will be harder for them to seek stim money for projects that were rejected on a ballot measure. Though it might be a boon for thier streetcar infrastructure, regional transit might suffer from a crisis in confidence where opponents claim the win and the upper hand in cash direction. With the stakes so high for federal funding opportunity, it's important that these measures pass, else an opportunity that happens once in a century to double up on much needed transit capital spending could be lost.

Investment Spending

This is what I talk about when I get annoyed that the FTA won't build tunnels and instead points the cost effectiveness of bus rapid transit. While the cost of the tunnel is more, it sure lasts a long time, and should be amortized as such.

And as people like Minnesota congressman James Oberstar have pointed out, the failure to separate government investment from government consumption has perverse effects on how the government spends money, leading it to emphasize projects that cost less on an annual basis but more on a long-term basis, while also leading us to underestimate the benefits to the economy at large of investments in things like infrastructure, basic research, and so on.

As Oberstar said:

Many argue that our current method of accounting biases spending decisions against physical infrastructure by requiring infrastructure to be paid for all at once rather than over its useful life. Thus, infrastructure investments are not judged on their long-term economic return, but rather on a distorted view of their "up-front" impact on the budget.

H/T Bellows

Queen Sized Microcosm

Charlotte leaders asked the federal government to pay for their new light rail line, platform extensions and new vehicles for the existing line, and a north commuter line. Given funding constraints at the federal level you can probably guess what happened. The FTA said they didn't have enough money. As discussed previously, there is a 77 year demand for transit expansion in this country and this just proves that there is either going to need to be a serious infusion of funding for transit on the federal level or cities are going to have to come up with the money themselves. Keith Parker at CATS has made these types of comments as well saying:

...Parker said he'll likely brainstorm other ways to raise money so rail lines can be built sooner.
...
With the cost of raw materials rising, Parker believes it's important to build Charlotte's rapid transit in the next decade, rather than by 2035, the finish line in the current plan. If the federal government isn't willing to send more money to CATS, Parker said he may bring the Metropolitan Transit Commission and the Charlotte City Council options.

After years of spending on things other than transit, the Mr. Parker has the right idea about trying to catch up, which would make it cheaper in the long run. Their 10 year wait for the first line did nothing but cause project inflation and almost lost them thier funding source all together with the referendum last year. Yet Pat McCrory, the Mayor, Gubernatorial candidate, and staunch transit supporter, is against the idea of using any funding outside of the current half cent funding stream.

McCrory said this week he doesn't want to consider a new tax or bond to build the transit system sooner. CATS already wants to use some property taxes to build the commuter rail line, and the city of Charlotte is considering the same for the streetcar.

“We'll have to live within the confines of the half-cent sales tax,” McCrory said. “During these economic times we'll have to be both economically and politically pragmatic. And at times, patient.”

In transit funding, patience costs money, and there are other ways to pay for transit projects. Because transit creates value that often isn't credited to it, there needs to be more attention paid to the value is created and capturing it to pay for the project. Putting a cage on it isn't the answer.

Measure AAARRRR

It doesn't look very good down there. Given California needs 66% of the vote on these types of measures (dumbest rules ever) everyone pretty much has to be on board except for the always wacko. What happens then is one constituency can hold the whole process hostage to get what they want. That is what happens in the state legislature all the time for the budget. A few people get to hold the rest of the state hostage. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. If this goes down, I don't see a replay in a year like Seattle. And it will be a long time to wait and much more expensive for important projects like the Subway to the Sea.

United States Fixed Guideway Capital Costs Estimated

A report called Jumpstarting the Transit Space Race was released today by my day job organization about the backlog of capital fixed guideway transportation projects in the United States. The total capital cost for almost 400 subway, commuter rail, light rail, streetcar and BRT projects is estimated at $248 billion dollars. If that seems like a lot of money, it is. In fact, under the current capital funding mechanism of New Starts, this would take 77 years to fund if projects were funded 50% locally and 50% federally. That's a pretty messed up system.
Here are a few select quotes from the report folks might find interesting:

Americans took 10.1 billion trips on transit in 2007, saving 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline – the equivalent of a supertanker leaving the Middle East every 11 days.

“We’re loving our transit systems to death today,”(4) Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) told the U.S. House in a debate early this summer.

Roger Snoble was among those to testify. “In its efforts to exercise due diligence over federal funds, the Federal Transit Administration has developed a system so complex, so replete with reports and analyses and so fraught with delays and schedule uncertainties that it now obstructs
one of the agency’s fundamental goals to assist urban areas in building critically needed transit systems in a cost-effective manner,” Snoble told the House Subcommittee on Highways and Transit.

A 2005 survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau found that only 54 percent of American households have access to bus and rail transit, and only 25 percent have what they consider to be a “good option.”

Transit Not Stadium

Richard is right. We should be building transit, not sports stadiums. Even if stadiums did help districts, the investment in one place for games eight times a year is a waste compared to daily linear transit lines that can have the affect of changing the city, instead of one district. Not to mention in 20 years, stadiums are obsolete according to team owners.

Street Railway Resurrection

Michigan lawmakers are looking at a bill that would allow street railway companies to form in the state and use recently passed tax increment financing laws and other mechanisms to fund new lines. I don't imagine the line is completely private, but its an interesting step away from the public transit agency model. It seems similar to Portland Streetcar Inc, but I haven't looked deep enough yet to see the similarities. There are some interesting provisions though:

As envisioned in one set of bill drafts, for which state Rep. Bert Johnson, D-Detroit, is the lead sponsor, the street railway company could build, own and operate the system. The company could acquire property, including through gift, purchase or condemnation, and could borrow money and issue bonds.

It's a fascinating idea and the point is to have it replicated all over the state, from Grand Rapids, to Ann Arbor, to Detroit.

Allen also said a goal is “to come up with a replicable plan, which means that we can work it in Detroit, or Grand Rapids. We’re open to input from anyone. If this tool can work in a variety of communities in the state, that is one of our objectives.”

The Double Standard

Ryan makes a good point about the double standard that exists for freeways and transit. When you build freeways with excess capacity, it's generally called an investment. When we build transit with excess capacity for the future its deemed a waste and not worth the cost. In this respect, sometimes I feel as if the cost effectiveness index is like a handicap. Its supposed to make sure we're spending money wisely, but sometimes it's just holding back investment that would make real change.

The point that highways are built speculatively all the time while transit is not is a very good one, and one which never fails to get my goat. But I think it’s worth emphasizing that speculative transit isn’t really about building lines into the wilderness. It’s about building lines into places people already live in order to take better advantage of valuable land there.

The Queen Turned King

Between all of this mortgage meltdown/bank failure discussions is a discussion of city competitiveness. Recent blog posts have focused on Charlotte especially this one from the Urbanophile comparing Charlotte to cities in the rust belt. He comments that Charlotte is leading because of its attitude and that cities in the Midwest outside of Minneapolis and Chicago have just tossed in the towels.

As Ryan has said, Charlotte looks like it won't get hit too hard by sudden bank death syndrome but the Urbanophile's comments got me to thinking. While Charlotte is out there scaring the pants off of not only the Rust Belt, but titans of the South like Tampa and Atlanta, is it really because they "want it more"? When I ran back in college, I would like to say that if I ran against Haile Gebresellasie in the Marathon (He broke the world record this weekend) I could win if I wanted it more, but we know that's not even close to being true.

But what are Charlotte's advantages? I thought really hard and tried to think about it in terms outside of the creative class argument that people always try to make about cool places. I kept thinking about things like new beginnings and not really having glory days to look back on but when it got down to it the thing that stuck out to me was age group. Why are cities like Charlotte places where younger folks want to locate. I'll admit when I got out of grad school it was Denver, San Francisco, or Austin. But there has to be more than that right? I must not be thinking hard enough.

Everything I seem to come up with is without a backup in data, such as its a younger city in terms of infrastructure. But that doesn't explain cities like San Francisco or Chicago. Is it because banking was thriving and growing and folks moving down from the Northeast wanted to make it more familiar? Maybe that is it. All of these new exciting cities seem to have an influx of people from either California or the Northeast. It's certainly not Nascar thats pulling them towards Charlotte. I still can't bring myself to think that it's because cities don't want it bad enough. Thoughts?